Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a form of multiplexing that distributes data over a number of carriers that have a very precise spacing in the frequency domain. The precise spacing of the carriers provides several benefits such as high spectral efficiency, resiliency to radio frequency interference and lower multi-path distortion. Due to its beneficial properties and superior performance in multi-path fading wireless channels, OFDM has been identified as a useful technique in the area of high data-rate wireless communication, for example wireless metropolitan area networks (MAN). Wireless MAN are networks to be implemented over an air interface for fixed, portable, and mobile broadband access systems.
Different types of the data transmissions can be transmitted by the wireless network using an OFDM air interface, for example unicast transmissions, multicast transmissions and broadcast transmissions. The different types of transmissions result in transmission frames of different sizes due to different sized guard intervals between OFDM symbols in the frames.